2018 • INNOVATION AT THE INTERSECTION

Angela Belcher

ANGELA BELCHER of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research uses materials science and nanotechnology to create cancer imaging agents that could one day help surgeons find and remove small tumors that they currently can’t see during surgery. Belcher and her lab have shown that surgeons using their nanoparticle-based technology could find tumors less than one millimeter in size in mice, and that lab animals whose tumors were removed with the help of the imaging technique lived 40 percent longer. Her lab is moving towards non-invasive imaging and screening for the early detection of ovarian cancer.